The present invention relates to electronic price displaying labels mountable in a display position along a rail.
Experience has shown that physical placement of products within a store can have enormous influence on the sales of the products. Factors such as shelf height for a product and the number of product facings along a shelf can be of great significance to store planners. Thus, it is important for a store planner to ensure that the store plan showing product locations on shelves, is faithfully followed. Oftentimes, however, deviations from the store plan could result from accidental or intentional misplacement of the labels by store personnel, by customers, or by others.
Electronic price displaying labels mountable in a display position along a rail have been known in the prior art. In the prior art, the electronic price displaying label comprises a protuberance connected to the rear portion of the label, a first groove arranged around the bottom of the protuberance, and a second groove arranged horizontally across the top of the label and the top of the protuberance. The top of the label is of a smaller width than the bottom of the label and the first groove and second groove are spaced at an unequal distance from the forward portion of the label. A cylindrical slot is provided perpendicular to and within the second groove and positioned horizontally from the protuberance. A locking pin mechanism is provided on the label having a key slot arranged on the front of the label and a locking pin arranged on the rear of the label and positioned horizontally from the protuberance. The display of the electronic price display label is of a liquid-crystal type.
The rail upon which the above-described electronic price displaying label is mountable consists of two parallel oppositely disposed lips provided on the forward side of the rail such that the lips define a cavity and an accessible slot. The rail back, top, bottom, first lip and second lip are substantially planar, with the first lip and top defining a first corner of the rail and with the second lip and bottom defining a second corner. In addition, the distance from one first corner to the bottom edge of the first lip differs from the distance from the top edge of the second lip to the second corner. The first and second lips are spaced at unequal distances from the back of the rail with the first lip joined to the top of the rail and the second lip joined to the bottom of the rail. The first lip and second lip provided on the rail may be engaged with a first and second groove disposed on the label such that the label can be secured onto the rail.
The aforementioned label can be secured onto the rail by inserting the protuberance of the label into the cavity of the rail when the label is in a position perpendicular to the rail and then rotating the label counterclockwise to a position parallel to the rail such that the label is secured onto the rail. Further, the label can be locked onto the rail using the aforementioned locking mechanism provided on the label by inserting a key into the key slot provided on the front of the label and rotating the key such that the locking pin provided on the rear of the label is activated and engages with the lower lip of the rail to lock the label onto the rail, thus preventing removal of the label without use of the key. A multitude of labels may be attached at a number of possible locations on the rail described above. This arrangement, however, has a drawback in that it can be too easy for the label to slide in a horizontal direction along the rail thus enabling easy misplacement of the label.
Some prior attempts have been made to detect the misplacement of the above-described electronic price displaying labels in an effort to remedy accidental or intentional misplacement. One such prior art attempt involves the use of an individual electronic controller serving each rail. However, such a remedy can, at best, detect misplacement only if a label has strayed so far as to be on a rail served by another controller. Besides requiring a large number of controllers in a given installation and being ineffective to detect misplacement to a different location along a rail served by a given controller, such systems require that individual labels perform many of the communication transactions, requiring more complex and thus costly, electronic components.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have an electronic price displaying label whereby the misplacement of the label secured in a display position along a rail, specifically misplacement of the label in a horizontal direction along the rail, is prevented, thereby ensuring that a store plan showing product locations on shelves is faithfully followed.